Back to Parma, back to reality,

Siro, Virgil and I drove back from Manfredonia last night (correction-Siro and Virgil drove while I sat in the back, read and fell asleep to the rhythym of two best friends fighting each other over directions to a methane gas station in Italian, only to laugh about it later). Remember how I told you that all of Italy goes on holiday at the same time? During the holiday you think "What a great idea", "Why dont we do this?" "How wonderful they can all go together without trying to coordinate schedules" THEN the holiday ends. And every Italian and their cousins, grandparents, children, dogs are trying to head back home from whichever coastal city they decided to visit. Its like American spring break but with more hair gel, louder and bigger families, less fast food and more coffee. We even left a day early and it was still CHAOS. We decided to leave in the afternoon and, as Virgil told me before we left "drive through the night" (who are we, Batman?). BUT we did. We left at 5pm for a 450 mile drive and got back to Parma around 3am.

We slept in this morning, watched a couple of movies, ate pizza and enjoyed the air conditioning after a brutally hott week by the sea. The sea was great, we had endless time visiting with friends, saw some beautiful scenery, swallowed our fair share of salt water and ate, Im almost positive, all of the mussels from the Adriatic in every way they can be prepared. Virgil is right when he says that, after this week, we are poor but happy.

He is leaving tonight/tomorrow morning at 3am to go to Germany for work and I will head to Milan either tomorrow or the next day for my flight to the Netherlands. Its time to get back into real life mode which means figuring out how to get a cell phone in the Netherlands, understanding my new health insurance, registering for residence in Holland, finishing pre tests for school, remembering how to write a paper/study for an exam and, most importantly, finding a place to get a hair cut.

It is slowly sinking in that a certain 6 month journey is coming to end while a new one is just getting started. After spending a month with Virgil, I am totally relaxed and ready to start something new and semi-permanent. Virgil and I have had so much fun together- in Parma, in the mountains, at the coast. We have been all over Italy, ate a thousand different Italian dishes and few German ones, hiked up a mountain, dove in the sea, gotten on each others nerves, laughed when we realized how stupid that was (he probably still thinks I could talk less and I still think Tracy Chapman is a fine artist who deserves international respect and attention), and taken trains, planes, boats and automobiles to do it. He had the hardest job in the world this week (beeches can attest) of dealing with a PRIME-time transition Lindsey who was fighting every instinct to pass time as quickly as possible and bail out of the coast early. He straight up handled it like a champion, all in a second language. It couldnt have been a better way to relax before school. I will be sad to see him go tonight.

In the words of Lupe Fiasco most recently, the show goes on. To the Netherlands, the last pin point on my blog map and, its safe to say, my new home. SAY WHAT?

Lindsey